The Norman Conquest
It was during the Crusades, a struggle incepted to serve the designs of the Guilhemids, that these families came into contact with the Assassins, and imported their doctrines to Europe, where they eventually became known as Scottish Rite Freemasonry. The importance of Scotland was that it was thought to be there that the sacred bloodline was thought to survive, characterized by their red hair. While also deriving from Scythia, during the Crusades, a particular bloodline was composed, by way of intermarriage with the Eastern aristocracy, again, through the important person of Dubrawka of Bohemia, to result in the sacred bloodline of the Stuarts and Sinclairs.
The Sinclairs were a Norman family descended from Rollo the Viking, a Norman Viking leader, who married Poppa of Bavaria, the great-granddaughter of William of Gellone, and from whom were descended the Dukes of Normandy. Rollo the Viking was the son of Rangvald the Wise, Jarl of Orkney. Orkney consists of about two hundred small islands just north of Caithness in northern Scotland. The islands were invaded by Vikings in the ninth century AD, where they ruled as Jarls, and made the islands the headquarters for their raiding expeditions.
Studies have discovered that the genetic component of the population of Orkney is characterized by a type not found in other British samples, but one in high frequency in Russia, Ukraine, Bohemia, and throughout Central Asia, and rare in East Asia and Western Europe. According a study, titled The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y- chromosome diversity, conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, the distribution of this gene grouping is “...likely to represent traces of an ancient population migration originating in southern Russia/Ukraine”, where it is found at a high frequency. [1] In other words, this specific genetic type originated in Scythia.
The infusion of the racial component of these new invaders into the peoples of Scotland resulted in a prevalence of the red hair which was characteristic of the Scythians. Scotland has the highest proportion of redheads of any country in the world, with around thirteen percent of the population having naturally red hair. A further forty percent of Scots carry the variant gene which results in red hair. Ireland, as well, has the second highest population of naturally redheaded people in the world, amounting to about ten percent of its inhabitants. [2]
Ragnvald was the great-grandson of Halfdan the Old. According to Snorri, Halfdan the Old was the most famous of all kings. Halfdan performed a human sacrifice at the winter solstice, that he might live three hundred years. Instead, however, he received the answer that he would not live more than the normal span of a man’s life, but that for three hundred years all of his descendants would achieve great repute.
Emma of Normandy, the daughter of Rollo’s great-grandson, Richard Duke of Normandy, married Ethelred the Unready, the son and successor of Edward the Elder. When England was invaded by Sven I of Denmark, Ethelred was forced to flee from England to Normandy, to seek shelter with his brother-in-law, Robert. Ethelred returned to England in only 1014 AD, after Sven died, but he himself also died only two years later.
Ethelred the Unready was then succeeded by his son, Edmund II Ironside. However, Canute the Great, the son of Sven and Gunhilda, the daughter of Dubrawka and Mieszko I of Poland, enjoyed greater support from the English nobility. [3] Nevertheless, Ethelred and Canute, negotiated a peace, in which they agreed that upon either of their deaths, territories belonging to the deceased would be ceded to the living.
When Edmund II died, Canute became King of England, Denmark and Norway. To associate his line with the overthrown English dynasty, and to insure himself against attack from Normandy, where Ethelred’s other son, Edward the Confessor, and Alfred Atheling, remained in Exile, Canute married Ethelred’s widow, Emma of Normandy. He then designated their son Harthacanute as heir to the throne, in preference to his other son, Harold Harefoot, an illegitimate child by Aelgifu of Northampton, a concubine.
In opposition to his brother, Harold proclaimed himself King of England in 1037 AD, after the death of his father, and had Alfred Atheling blinded and killed when they attempted to return to England. Harold himself died in 1040 AD, and Harthacanute, who was just then preparing an invasion, succeeded him to the throne. Harthacanute then invited his half- brother Edward the Confessor back from Normandy, to become his co-ruler and heir.
Edward the Confessor then heard that another half-brother, Edward the Exile, the son of Ethelred the Unready by another woman, was still alive, he had him recalled to England and made him his Heir. When only a few months old, Canute the Great had sent Edmund’s son, Edward the “Exile” to be murdered in Denmark. Instead, however, he was secretly brought to Kiev, and then made his way to Hungary. In Hungary, Edward the Exile married Agatha of Bulgaria, the daughter of Gavril Radomir, son of Samuil of Bulgaria. Agatha’s mother was Hercegno of Hungary, daughter of Geza and Adelaide, daughter of Mieszko I and Dubrawka. [4]
However, Edward the Exile died shortly after his return, so Edward made his great nephew Edgar Atheling his heir. But Edgar had no secure following among the nobles. The resulting succession crisis opened the way for the successful invasion by William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, the son of Robert of Normandy. Though Edgar Atheling was elected king after Harold’s death, he was brushed aside by William of Normandy, who would use his relationship, as grandnephew of Ethelred the Unready, as the basis of his claim to the throne, claiming that the childless Edward the Confessor had chosen him his heir.
William further strengthened his claim by marrying, in 1053 AD, Matilda of Flanders. Matilda was descended from Baldwin II of Flanders, of the Guilhemids, who had married Ethelswith, the daughter of Alfred the Great. Baldwin II was the son of Judith of England, the daughter of Charles the Bald and Ermentrude of Orleans, herself the daughter of William of Gellone. [5] She was first married to Ethelwulf before she married Baldwin’s II father, Baldwin I Count of Flanders. Baldwin II’s grandson, Baldwin III Count of Flanders, was married to Matilda of Billung, whose father, Herman Billung, was the brother to Oda Billung, mother of Otto “the Illustrious”, Holy Roman Emperor. Matilda’s grandfather, Baldwin IV Count of Flanders, married Otgive of Luxembourg, daughter of Frederick of Luxembourg, brother of Saint Cunigunde.
Camelot
This marriage effected in Hungary came at a point when the numerous strains of this dispersed bloodline were reconnected, just in time for the Crusades, which brought into existence a number of organizations that incepted the occult conspiracy in Europe. The daughter of Edward the Exile and Agatha of Bulgaria was St. Margaret Queen of Scotland. [6] Thus, when she married Malcolm III of Scotland, who was descended from Aidan, the father of King Arthur, the joint Saxon and Khazar heritage was joined to the Scottish. Malcolm and Margaret’s son became David I of Scotland, while David’s sister, Editha, married Henry I King of England, the son of William the Conqueror. It was their descendants, the Stuarts and Sinclairs, the purported Grail family, who would figure centrally in coming developments.
One influencing factor in the rise of Arthurian legend among the Normans was that William the Conqueror was also a descendant of the Bretons, who had also supported William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings, providing a large proportion of the knights. The Bretons had kept alive the legends of King Arthur, brought with them when they fled Britain during the Saxon invasions five centuries earlier. The reason being, as the authors of the Holy Blood Holy Grail have shown, might have been that, in contrast to later Grail chroniclers, Wolfram von Eschenbach, instead of locating Arthur in Britain, maintained that his court of Camelot was situated in France, quite specifically at Nantes in Brittany. According to Wolfram, then, Arthur’s court is in Brittany.
Originally settled by Celtic tribes, Brittany was conquered by Julius Caesar in 56 BC. Christianised in the third century, Brittany was successively invaded by the Saxons, in the third century. In the fourth century, Romanized Britons from across the English Channel started to settle, and at an increasing rate as Roman troops began their withdrawal from Britain, having been pushed by the raiding Anglo-Saxons. The immigrant Britons gave the region its current name and contributed to the Breton language, a sister language to Welsh language and Cornish.
During the ninth century AD, Brittany was severely affected by Viking attacks, contributing to the nobility being fraught by dynastic disputes. The authority of the reigning dukes suffered even further from the pressures of resisting claims by both the dukes of Normandy and the counts of Anjou. This process of fragmentation was halted and reversed from the eleventh century, when intermarriage resulted in the ducal title vesting in one individual, Duke Alain IV, and scion of a direct line of descent of kings of Brittany, and before that, of Britain, descended from Llyr the Celtic Sea god, the father of Bran the Arch Druid, who married Anna, the daughter of Joseph of Arimathea. Bran and Anna had twelve sons, and it was Alain le Gros, their youngest son, who became known as the Fisher King, and Keeper of the Grail. [7]
Alain IV Duke of Brittany married Ermengarde of Anjou, the daughter of Fulk IV. The counts of Anjou were descended from Ingelger, Count of Anjou, who was knighted by Louis, son of Charles the Bald, as the first lord of Anjou. Ingelger was the father of Fulk I of Anjou, whose grandson, Geoffroi I comte d’Anjou married Adelaide of Vermandois. The House of Vermandois were Guilhemids, descended from from Guillaume’s daughter Cunigonde and Bernard of Italy, grandson of Charlemagne. Their son was Fulk III Count of Anjou, whose daughter, another Ermingarde, was the mother of Fulk I.
Ermengard had previously been married to William IX Duke of Aquitaine, who lived from 1071 to 1112 AD. He was direct descendant of Guillaume de Gellone. His granddaughter was Eleanore of Aquitaine. Eleanor’s father was William X of Aquataine, and her mother, Philippa of Toulouse. Eleanor inherited the Duchy of Aquitaine, and, marrying Louis VI, the grandson of Philip I, became queen of France. However, Eleanor’s conduct aroused Louis’s jealousy and marked the beginning of their estrangement. Their marriage was finally annulled in 1152 AD.
Eleanor then married Henry II King of England. Fulk IV’s son, Fulk V was the father of Geoffrey V Plantagenet, through whom were united the Guilhemid, Norman, Saxon and Khazzarian lines, when he married Matilda, the daughter of Henry I of England, and Editaha of Scotland. Their son was Henry II, who became King of England in 1154 AD, and married Eleanore of Aquitaine, the granddaughter of William IX of Aquitaine.
Thus, Henry II ranks as the first of the Plantagenet kings of England, and through his marriage to Eleanor, established the Angevin Empire, as it is called, that controlled a domain dwarfing the power of France, and incorporating all of England, half of France, as well as Scotland and Ireland. Eleanore bore him five sons and three daughters, one of whom was Richard I, “the Lion- Hearted”, who succeeded his father as king of England, and under whom the Angevin Empire attained its height.
The Cathars
Somehow, perhaps through these intermarriages, Paulician and Bogomil influences ended up in in southern France, among the Guilhemids, where they produced the heresy of the Cathars. Though, this heresy also received influences from the Kabbalah, which was then flourishing in the region. It was Eleanor’s grandfather, William IX of Aquitaine, who is recognized as the first of the troubadours, part of a culture of “Courtly Love” that developed out of the influence of Catharism, which flourished in the Languedoc, particularly the regions of Toulouse and Aquitaine.
Essentially, the Cathars were Gnostic. The New Testament they attributed to the benevolent God, but that the God of the Old was evil, equating him with Satan. They believed also that the Christ who was born in the visible, and terrestrial Bethlehem, and crucified in Jerusalem, was an evil man, and that Mary Magdalene was his concubine. For the good Christ, as they claimed, never ate, nor drank, and never assumed physical form, except spiritually in the body of Paul. They also regarded the Church of Rome was a “den of thieves”, and as the harlot of the Apocalypse. [8]
The Cathars also practiced vegetarianism and believed in a form of reincarnation. Marriage was frowned upon, and they believed that those who bore children could not be saved in this world. It was as a result of this particular belief that the term “buggery” was introduced, since if they were to give in to sexual temptation in this manner, it would at least ensure that no children resulted. And, like the Gnostics before them, the Cathars were accused of engaging in sexual orgies, sometimes involving incest, and of practicing secret rituals in worship of the Devil, involving the sacrifice of children and eating their flesh in cannibalistic rites.
The Crusades
Gershom Scholem, the foremost scholar of the subject, acknowledged that Catharism was influenced by a Kabbalistic text known as the Sepher ha-Bahir. The origin of the work is unknown. Though there had been important mystical developments leading up to that time, the teachings of the Rabbis of the Languedoc region underwent a powerful transformation, due to the infusion of a new mystical tradition, which the Bahir exemplified. Scholars of the Kabbalah have been unable to account for the source of this tradition, however, because it represented a form of classical Gnosticism of a kind that had disappeared since the first centuries AD.
One possible avenue for the transmission of the Gnostic knowledge of the Sepher ha-Bahir, corroborated by rumours familiar in the occult, is that the infamous Knights Templar had undertaken excavations beneath the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. Therefore, because of the special associations that persisted between the Templars and the Cathars, as well as the leading families of the Languedoc region, it would appear that the Crusades were instigated deliberately to provide the Templars this very opportunity, because it was likely known among them that such texts, or other treasures, still remained buried beneath the Temple.
In March of 1095, ambassadors sent by Byzantine emperor Alexius I called for help in defending his empire against the Seljuk Turks. Later that year, at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II called upon all Christians to join a war against the Turks, promising those who died in the endeavor immediate remission of their sins. The first to respond, a ragtag band led by Peter the Hermit, were known collectively as the People’s Crusade. However, lacking in military discipline, and ill-equipped, they were massacred by the Seljuk Turks.
The venture that did succeed was the one led by the leading representatives of the Guilhemids, known as the Princes’ Crusade. The son of Alexius I Comnenus, John II Comnenus, married Piroska of Hungary. She was the daughter of King Ladislau I of Hungary, the great-grandson of Michael, brother of Geza, and Adelaide, the daughter of Mieszko I King of Poland. John II’s son, Manuel I Comnenus, married Maria, the daughter of Raymond of Antioch, the son of William IX “the Troubadour” of Aquitaine, and Mahaut Countess of Toulouse.
The father of Mahaut, William IV of Toulouse, was the brother of Raymond IV, leader of the First Crusade. His mother, Constance, Princess of Antioch, was the daughter of Bohemund II, the grandson of Robert Guiscard, and Alix Princess of Jerusalem, whose father, Baldwin II King of Jerusalem, shared a grandfather with Godfroi de Bouillon, Manasses III. Raymond’s mother, Almodie de la Marche, was a descendant of Gilbert de Rouergue, the brother of Rabbi Makhir. His son Fredelon married Bertha of Autun, the sister of William of Gellone. Their grandson son was Raymond I of Toulouse. [9]
Raymond was joined by Bohemond, the son of Robert Guiscard, who was married to Constance of France, the daughter of Philip I King of France. Philip I’s father was Henry I King of France. Henri married Anne of Kiev, the daughter of Yaroslav I the Wise, one of numerous sons of Vladimir Grand Duke of Kiev. Yaroslav’s mother was the famous Rogneda of Polotsk. It has been speculated that her father Ragnvald, who came from Scandinavia, and established himself at Polatsk in the mid-10th century, belonged to the Ynglings royal family of Norway. In or about 980, Vladimir of Novgorod, on learning that Rogneda was betrothed to his brother Yaropolk I of Kiev, took Polotsk and forced Rogneda to marry him. Having raped Rogneda in the presence of her parents, he ordered them to be killed, along with two of Rogneda’s brothers. Rogneda gave him several children, among which was Yaroslav. [10]
Most importantly, Raymond and Bohemund were aided by Godfroi of Bouillon, duke of Lorraine. Godfroi’s father, Eustace II, was descended Baldwin I of Flanders, Alfred the Great, and from Siegried, the father of Cunigunde of Luxemburg, whose wife was Hedwig of Nordgau, was the granddaughter of Henry the Fowler. Siegfried’s mother was Cunigunde of Hainaut, the greatgranddaughter of Charles the Bald. Godfroi’s mother was Ida of Verdun, who was descended on her father’s side from Hugh the Great, and Friedrich of Upper and Lower Lorraine, the brother of Siegried of Moselgau. Ida’s mother is descended from Hedwig’s sister, Albrada of Lorraine.
When the Princes’ Crusade succeed in capturing Jerusalem, in 1099 AD, Godfroi was offered the crown as “King of Jerusalem”. He refused, and it was instead accepted by his brother, Baldwin.
The Templars
Then, in 1118 AD, the order of the Templars was founded in the conquered city. The Templars, one of two of the principal order of crusading knight, along with the Knights Hospitallers of St. John, are well recognized as the typical image of the crusaders, with long white mantles, emblazoned with the equal armed red cross “pattee.” Originally concerned with ensuring safe passage of Christian pilgrims between the port of Jaffa and the city of Jerusalem, the order was founded by a French nobleman, Hughes de Payens, and eight other soldiers, who took the name, Poor Knights of the Temple, from Temple of Solomon, from where they were first stationed.
The legend recounted in occult circles is that the Templars learned from certain “initiates of the East”, a Jewish doctrine which was attributed to St. John the Apostle. [11] These Christians of St. John, known as Johannites, and reputed to inhabit the “banks of the Euphrates”, are identified with the Mandeans or the Sabians. The Templars were also reputed to have acquired such teachings from the Assassins. The Hermeticism of the Sabians, also preserved by the Ismailis of the Grand Lodge in Cairo, was thought to represent the preserved Gnostic teachings of Hellenistic Alexandria.
Because the Mandeans revered John the Baptist as the prophet of the ancient religion of Moses, Kurt Rudolph, noted scholar of Gnosticism, has pointed out, “the attempt has been made to deduce from this that we have here historical traditions of the disciples of the Baptist, but this cannot be proved up to now. It is more likely that the Mandeans took over legends of this kind from heretical Christians, possible Gnostics, circles and shaped them according to their ideas.” [12] The “Johannite” doctrine, derived originally from Talmudic or Kabbalistic sources, taught that Jesus was the illegitimate son of Mary, who as a boy, was taken to Egypt, where he was initiated into the secret doctrines of the priests of the Essenes, and returned to Palestine to deceive the people with his magic. [13]
According to Kabbalistic legend, it had also been in Egypt that Moses was initiated, where he learned the highest mysteries, which he then passed on to his brother Aaron and to the leaders of the Israelites. Jesus, therefore, was then supposedly instructed in these traditions, at a school in Alexandria, in the degrees of Egyptian initiation, giving rise to the legend that he had belonged to the Essenes, by which he initiated or baptized his disciples in the manner of St. John. It was from the Mandeans that the Templars appropriated the teaching that Jesus was a false Messiah sent by the devil, for they had, as occultist Eliphas Levi described, “two doctrines; one was concealed and reserved to the leaders, being that of Johannism; the other was public, being Roman Catholic doctrine.” [14]
Therefore, contact with the Sabians or Assassins was one possible avenue for the transmission of the Gnostic knowledge that went to form the content of the Bahir. Nathaniel Deutsch, in The Gnostic Imagination: Gnosticism, Mandaeism and Merkabah Mysticism, recognizes that:
At present, we must be satisfied with acknowledging the phenomenological parallels between the Mandaean and Kabbalistic traditions, although we must also seriously consider the possibility that both Mandaean and Kabbalistic sources drew on a common pool of earlier (Jewish?) theosophic traditions. [15]
The other possibility is that the Bahir was derived from text discovered hidden beneath the Temple by the Templars. In fact, the Templars had long been rumored to have discovered a “treasure”, while stationed in Jerusalem, that made them phenomenally wealthy and powerful. And, in 1867, Captain Wilson, Lieutenant Warren and a team of Royal Engineers found strong support for these rumours. They had re-excavated the area and uncovered tunnels extending vertically, for some 25 meters, before fanning out under the Dome of the Rock, which is generally thought to be the site of King Solomon’s temple. Crusader artifacts found in these tunnels attest to Templar involvement. More recently, a team of Israeli archaeologists, intrigued by the Warren and Wilson discovery, reinvestigated the passage and concluded that the Templars did in fact excavate beneath the Temple. [16]
The Templars may have discovered texts that had been hidden beneath the site prior to its destruction by the Roman invasion in 70 AD, thus accounting for the mysterious appearance of the Bahir, as it was described by the Kabbalists as having reached them from Palestine, “in extremely mutilated form, as remnants of scrolls, booklets and traditions.” [17] Once in southern France, this new mystical approach touched off not only a revolution in Jewish thinking, producing what is now known as the Medieval Kabbalah, but contributed to the Christian heresy of the Cathars, and from them the Templars.
The influence of the Bahir, through the Cathar culture of Courtly Love entirely transformed the legend of King Arthur, known as the Matter of Britain, makes its appearance in French literature, in the years following the Templar discovery. The Templars then became the focus of the various Arthurian romances, which gained popularity in the twelfth century. Arthur was said to hold court at Camelot, and to have gathered the Knights of the Round Table, including Lancelot, Gawain, Galahad, and others, who were descendants of the Fisher Kings. These knights engaged in fabulous quests, most importantly, the quest for the “Holy Grail”.
The Grail legends therefore refer cryptically to the Templar project in the Holy Land. The Templars were the agents of the Guilhemids. And, it was among the Jews of Narbonne that the Kabbalah underwent this transformation. Narbonne had been the capital of Septimania, where Rabbi Makhir had originally been appointed “King of the Jews”, and taken the name of Thierry, and which continued to be governed by his descendants, the Guilhemids. Scholem also concludes, “whatever we know about the earliest Kabbalists and As Scholem has pointed out, the Cathars agree with the Kabbalists on a number of points, but that, “the question of a possible link between the crystallization of the Kabbalah, as we find it in the redaction of the Bahir, and the Cathar movement must also remain unresolved, at least for the moment. This connection is not demonstrable, but the possibility cannot be excluded.” [18]
Several thirteenth century Christian polemicists had reproached the Cathars for their relations with Jews, and historian Paul Johnson notes that, “the Church was by no means wide of the mark when it identified Jewish influences in the Cathar movement…” [19] In Jewish Influences on Christian Reform Movements, Louis I. Newman concludes:
... that the powerful Jewish culture in Languedoc, which had acquired sufficient strength to assume an aggressive, propagandist policy, created a milieu wherefrom movements of religious independence arose readily and spontaneously. Contact and association between Christian princes and their Jewish officials and friends stimulated the state of mind which facilitated the banishment of orthodoxy, the clearing away of the debris of Catholic theology. Unwilling to receive Jewish thought, the princes and laity turned towards Catharism, then being preached in their domains. [20]
Ultimately, the secret of the Holy Grail, as the authors of the Holy Blood Holy Grail revealed, is that of a sacred lineage. Therefore, the authors concluded, the Sangreal should be translated to mean, “Sang Real” or Royal Blood”. The authors, like Dan Brown after him, erred in asserting descent from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Grail lore, like that of the Cathars, is Gnostic. Rather, Mary Magdalene is an esoteric symbol, referring to the goddess, and the royal blood of the Grail is a Luciferian bloodline, which stems from the unholy conspiracy against the life of Jesus.
According to a anonymous Grail legend by the name of the Perlesvaus, we find: “here is the story of thy descent; here begins the Book of the Sangreal.” Theodoric was known as Aymery in the romances, and was the father of Guillaume de Gellone, about whom there were at least six major epic poems composed before the era of the crusades, including Willehalm, by Wolfram. In a Wolfram poem, Perceval is the father of Lohengrin, the Knight Swan. One day, in his castle Munsalvaesche, he hears a bell toll as a signal to come to the aid of a damsel in distress. According to some sources, she was the duchess of Bouillon, whom Lohengrin hastened to her rescue in a boat drawn by swans. Having defeated her persecutor, he married the lady, though, requiring of her that she not question about his ancestry. At last, wrought with curiosity, she broke the vow, at which point Lohengrin was forced to leave. Though, he left her with a child, according to various accounts, that was either father or grandfather of Godfroi de Bouillon.
Baphomet
To deal with the Cathar heresy, at first, the Church tried conversion, by sending a number of legates into the region of Toulouse. But the local nobles protected the Cathars, and the Bishops of the district rejected the authority of the Pope’s legates. Papal legate Peter of Castelnau, known for excommunicating the noblemen who protected the Cathars, excommunicated Raymond VI, the Count of Toulouse. Raymond VI was the great-grandson of Raymond I, who led the First Crusade. Raymond I’s wife was Elvira of Castile and Leon, the daughter of Zaida of Denia, an Ismaili of the Fatimids, who had married Alfonso VI “the Brave” of Leon. [21] Elvira had first married Roger II Guiscard. Raymond VI’s mother was Constance Capet of Toulouse, the great-great-granddaughter of Constance of Arles and Vienna. [22] Raymond VI was himself married to Joan Plantagenet, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II King of England.
Peter of Castelnau was then murdered near Saint Gilles Abbey in 1208, on his way back to Rome. As a response, the Pope, in what is known as the Albigensian Crusade, in reference to the Languedoc center at Albi, moved in to extirpate the heresy. Finally, in 1229, the Pope established the Inquisition to root out the Cathars, and in 1244, final defeat came upon the Cathars at their famous stronghold of Montsegur, when more than 200 Cathar priests were massacred by the Crusaders.
A half-century later, the Templars would come under similar suspicions. Though the Templars had grown very powerful, by 1291, Jerusalem fell to Muslim leader Saladin, and nearly all of the Crusader holdings in Palestine came into Arab control. The Templars established their new headquarters in Cyprus, but with the loss of the Holy Land, the purpose of their existence was lost. Suspicion about the order began to mount. The true allegiances of the order were in doubt, as it became generally believed that the Templars were engaged in forming secret pacts with the Muslims. This rumor seems to have been confirmed when the Order entered into an alliance with the Amir of Damascus against the Hospitallers of Knights of St. John. It is known that there were frequent examples of the Templars forging alliances with the Muslims, and that they had established contacts with the Ismaili Assassins in a plot to gain control of Tyre.
Pope Clement V came under strong pressure from Philip IV the Fair of France at this time, and in response, in November 1307, ordered the arrest of the Templars in every country. King Philip had every Templar in France arrested on Oct. 13 of that year. On March 22, 1312, the Templars’ property throughout Europe was transferred to the Hospitalers, or confiscated by the state. Many Templars were executed or imprisoned, and in 1314 the order’s last grand master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake.
The Templars were charged with practicing witchcraft, of denying the tenets of the Christian faith, spitting or urinating on the cross during secret rites of initiation, worshipping a skull or head called Baphomet in a dark cave, anointing it with blood or the fat of anabaptized babies, worshipping the devil in the shape of a black cat, and committing acts of sodomy and bestiality. Despite the fact that a great number of the knights, including the Grand Master himself, Jacques du Molay, confessed to most of these accusations, modern historians continue to apologize for the Templars, instead accusing Phillip of political ambition or greed in seizing the order’s property. However, those acts of which the Templars were accused are typical of those that had been attributed in times past to the Ancient Mysteries, Gnostics or the Sabians of Harran.
The Sinclairs
Nevertheless, despite their supposed persecution, the Templars were reputed to have survived in Scotlland, where they were represented by the influential family of the Sinclairs. Legend has it that, when the Templars came under trial, their leader de Molay arranged for the Templar treasures to be removed in a fleet of galleys from the port of La Rochelle. The majority of these treasure ships sailed to Scotland. Templars have been suggested as the source of mounted soldiers who assisted Robert the Bruce’s forces at the battle of Bannockburn, as the Scots themselves did not have a mounted force.
The Templars had apparently chosen Scotland because they knew they would be immune from attack from the Catholic Church there, because King Robert the Bruce, and the whole Scottish nation, had been excommunicated for taking up arms against King Edward II of England. The more likely reason, however, was that they ventured to Scotland to align themselves with the bloodline that had just produced itself through the marriage of Margaret to Agatha of Bulgaria and Malcolm III of Scotland.
The famous “Scottish Declaration of Independence”, which was drawn up by Bernard de Linton, Chancellor of Scotland in the year 1320, should prove of value. Preserved as it is in the Register House, Edinburgh, this historic document bearing the seals of all the Scottish barons of the day was signed by Robert the Bruce and addressed to Pope John XXII after he attempted to secure Scottish submission to Edward II of England. It reads:
We know, Most Holy Father and Lord, and from the chronicles and books of the ancients gather, that among other illustrious nations, ours, to wit the nation of the Scots, has been distinguished by many honours; which, passing from the greater Scythia through the Mediterranean Sea and Pillars of Hercules, and sojourned in Spain among the most savage tribes through a long course of time, could nowhere be subjugated by any people, however barbarous; and coming thence one thousand two hundred years after the outgoing of the people of Israel, they, by many victories and infinite toil, acquired for themselves the possessions in the West which they now hold ... In their Kingdom one hundred and thirteen kings of their own royal stock, no stranger intervening, have reigned. [23]
The Templar force at the Battle of Bannockburn was led by Sir William Sinclair, of a family who, say genetic researchers Elizabeth Hirschman and Donald Panther-Yates, authors of a forthcoming book, When Scotland was Jewish, were secret Jews, among the many Sephardic Jews from Spain and southern France that entered Scotland from around 1100 AD onward. The first group would have accompanied William the Conqueror and assisted in setting up the civil administration in England. Some then made their way to Scotland, around 1150, at the invitation of Malcolm III and his son David I. [24]
The Sinclairs, like all Norman nobility, were also descended from the Viking, Rollo Ragnvaldsson and Poppa of Bavaria. Charles the Simple, King of France, met Rollo at the castle of St. Clair, and there made him Duke of Normandy. The Sinclairs soon multiplied to such an extent that they could not all stay at the castle of St. Clair, and were given various other castles around France. However, they all went to England with the Conqueror. One Sinclair, named William, did not like the Conqueror, his cousin, so with some other discontented barons, he went to Scotland. William St. Clair, like William the Conqueror, and Alain IV of Brittany, were descended from Conan I of Brittany. The two Williams were the grandsons of Emma of Normandy’s brother, Richard II “the Good” of Normandy, and Judith of Brittany, the daughter of Conan I of Brittany and Ermangard of Anjou. [25]
It was William St. Clair, serving on a delegation for his father’s cousin, King Edward the Confessor, who escorted his successor, Edward “the Exile”, from Hungary back to England, after which his daughter Margaret later married Malcolm III of Scotland. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, in 1128, soon after the Council of Troyes, Hugh de Payens, the Templars’ first Grand Master, met with their son, King David I of Scotland. King David granted Hugues and his knights the lands of Ballantradoch, by the Firth of Forth, but now renamed Temple. King David later surrounded himself with Templars, and appointed them as “the Guardians of his morals by day and night”. [26]
David married Maud of Northumberland, whose mother was Judith of Lens, the daughter of Godfroi de Bouillon’s brother, Lambert II de Boulogne, and Adeliza, the sister of William the Conqueror. Godfroi’s younger brother, Eustace III, married David’s sister, Mary Scots. Their daughter, Mathilde married Stephen I King of England, who was the son of Henry Count of Blois, and Adela of Normandy, the daughter of William the Conqueror. Adela’s brother, Henry I King of England, married David’s sister, Editha of Scotland. Their daughter, Mathilda Empress of England, married Geoffrey V, Comte d’Anjou, whose son became Henry II King of England and married Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Robert the Bruce claimed the Scottish throne as a great-great-great-great grandson of David. He was also a descendant of Robert the Brus II, who married William St. Clair’s sister Agnes. Robert the Bruce was also the grandson of Walter Stewart, 3rd High Stewart of Scotland. Walter Stewart, the sixth High Steward of Scotland, played an important part in the Battle of Bannockburn. Walter Stewart then married Majory, daughter of Robert the Bruce, and their son Robert II, eventually inherited the Scottish throne after his uncle David II of Scotland died. From them were descended all subsequent Stewart, or Stuart, kings of Scotland.
Before his death, Robert the Bruce had requested that his heart be taken to Jersusalem, and buried in the Templar Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The heart was taken by Sir William Sinclair, great-grandson of the first William St. Clair, and Sir James Douglas, but the two never made it to the Holy Land, having been killed in Spain in battle with the Muslims. [27] His grandson, also named William Sinclair, in the fifteenth century, became the third Earl of Orkney, first Earl of Caithness, and High Chancellor of Scotland. William’s mother was Jill Douglas, the great-granddaughter of James Douglas. [28] James Douglas’ mother was Elizabeth Stewart, the daughter of Alexander Stewart, 4th High Steward of Scotland. [29]
In 1441, King James II Stewart appointed William Sinclair to the post of Hereditary Patron and Protector of Scottish Masons. These were not Freemasons but working stone masons. It was not until well later that “speculative” Masons joined the guilds, which came to be known as Freemason. William Sinclair also designed the most sacred site in Freemasonry, Rosslyn Chapel, a church in the village of Roslin, replete with occult symbolism, and which has often been rumored to be the burial site of the Holy Grail, being the remains of Mary Magdalene.
The myth of the family has recently been popularized by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. It is at Rosslyn Chapel that Sophia, the protagonist of the book, finds out about the pedigree of her parents, who, “incredibly, both had been from Merovingian families — direct descendants of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ. Sophie’s parents and ancestors, for protection, had changed their family names of Plantard and Saint-Clair.” [30]
Dan Brown also divulges the ultimate secret of the Illuminati bloodline, which is perceived to be red hair, which of course is at its highest concentration in Scotland. Red hair, having been introduced by their Scythian ancestors, is believed to be its characteristic trait, a mark of their Luciferian nature. Not only is Sophia a redhead, but Brown makes repeated references to the importance of red hair, and carefully notes that Mary Magdalene was portrayed by Da Vinci as having red hair, as a deliberate reference to her “sacred” heritage.
According to Dan Brown, Rosslyn takes its name from the rose, which the traditional secret symbol of Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail. As Brown explains:
The chapel’s geographic coordinates fall precisely on the north-south meridian that runs through Glastonbury. This longitudinal Rose Line is the traditional marker of King Arthur’s Isle of Avalon and is considered the central pillar of Britain’s sacred geometry. It is from this hallowed Rose Line that Rosslyn — originally spelled Roslin— takes its name… or, as Grail academics preferred to believe, from the “Line of Rose”— the ancestral lineage of Mary Magdalene. [31]
There are hundreds of stone carvings in the walls and in the ceiling of the Rosslyn Chapel, which represent biblical scenes, Masonic symbols, and examples of Templar iconography. There are swords, compasses, trowels, squares and mauls with images of the Solomon’s Temple. In addition to the Jewish and occult symbolism, there are also some traces of Islam and pagan serpents, dragons, and woodland trees. The fertility figure of the Green Man, a European version of the dying-god Dionysus, is to be found everywhere on the pillars and arches, together with fruits, herbs, leaves, spices, flowers, vines and the plants of the garden paradise.